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Scanners being tested at Melbourne Airport will not blur the genitals of passengers.

Transport security authorities are trialling the new 'X-ray backscatter' body scanner, which has been described by critics as a 'virtual strip search'.

The scanner uses a low energy X-ray to reveal any objects, metal or otherwise, under a person's clothing, including body features. The testing will be entirely voluntary during the trial, which is being undertaken to test how the new scanners would affect the flow of passengers through the security point.

'It does see through clothing, but it's not a photographic image, it's a low-energy X-ray that reflects off the skin,' said Cheryl Johnson, general manager of the Office of Transport Security.

'It will show the private parts of people, but what we've decided is that we're not going to blur those out, because it severely limits the detection capabilities. It is possible to see genitals and breasts while they're going through the machine, though.'

However, Ms Johnson said there were a number of measures in place to tackle concerns about privacy.

As if queuing for ages, emptying pockets and taking off shoes at the airport was not enough - now there are fears images of European airline passengers will be flashing up on a computer screen in all their glory - minus their clothes.

The European Commission insists the proposals are at an early stage and would not be mandatory.

But there are nonetheless concerns among some in the European Parliament about the effect the scanners could have on human rights, data protection and personal dignity.

The images, while not quite of photo quality, do not leave much to the imagination.

For most people, airport security staff would likely get to know you rather better than you might like.

The disclosure that the government is experimenting with the use of backscatter X-ray technology in its screening of aviation passengers has produced considerable misgivings about the threat it poses to privacy and individual liberty. Backscatter technology will allow the production of photo quality images of passengers' naked bodies as if they were undressed. The nature of these images is such that most people would find them exceedingly invasive and may be particularly offensive to people of various ethnic or religious backgrounds.

The government has attempted to allay public concern by stating that the potential abuses of this security initiative will be curtailed by a variety of safeguards. The faces of individuals will be partly obscured, there will be no capability for printing, storing or transmitting the images, and the security officer examining the images will be located in a separate enclosed area thereby removing the images from public sphere.

These assurances have a hollow ring to them when a brief review of the war on terrorism provides a litany of systemic abuse of individual rights that cannot be ignored. Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and the persecution of Dr Mohammed Haneef are just a few of the multitude of egregious instances of misconduct committed by our public guardians claiming to protect us from the scourge of religious extremism.

Seventeen Chinese prisoners who have been held for nearly seven years in Guantánamo Bay will be informed on Monday that they could spend the rest of their lives behind bars, even though they face no charges and have been told by a judge they should be freed.

No country is willing to accept them and the US justice department has now blocked moves for them to be allowed to go to the US mainland, where they had been offered a home by refugee and Christian organisations.

The men's lawyer, Sabin Willett, is flying to Guantánamo Bay this weekend to break the news to the men, who are members of the Uighur ethnic group seeking autonomy from China. In a blunt and angry letter to justice department lawyers, Willett spelled out what he thought of the way the men had been treated.

"After years of stalling and staying and appellate gamesmanship, you pleaded no contest - they are not enemy combatants," Willett has written. "You have never charged them with any crime."

Last month a federal judge ruled that the men should be freed. "They were on freedom's doorstep," said Willett. "The plane was at Gitmo. The stateside Lutheran refugee services and the Uighur families and Tallahassee clergy were ready to receive them."

However, the justice department appealed against the ruling and Willett claims this will put the men into a potentially endless limbo.

In the dying days of the Bush administration, yet another presidential claim in the "war on terror" has been proved false by the withdrawal of the main charge against six Algerians held without trial for nearly seven years at Guantanamo prison camp.

George Bush's assertion in his 2002 State of the Union address – the same speech in which he wrongly claimed that Saddam Hussein had tried to import aluminium tubes from Niger – was that "our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy [in Sarajevo]."

Not only has the US government withdrawn that charge against the six Algerians, all of whom had taken citizenship or residence in Bosnia, but lawyers defending the Arabs – who had already been acquitted of such a plot in a Sarajevo court – have found that the US threatened to pull its troops out of the Nato peacekeeping force in Bosnia if the men were not handed over.

According to testimony presented by the Bosnian Prime Minister, Alija Behman, the deputy US ambassador to Bosnia in 2001, Christopher Hoh, told him that if he did not hand the men to the Americans, "then let God protect Bosnia and Herzegovina".